The Living Language Institute currently offers the following programs
a. Workshops for educators in Singing English
b. Workshops for parents in Singing English
c. Development of Projects and Programs: We are developing the following programs:
- Early Childhood Education training that will incorporate the Sound-to-Symbol methodology and Singing English
- The Family Learning Network to support families of children on the Autistic Spectrum
- New Dawn Centre for Research and Graduate Studies- a proposed new private graduate school to offer a Masters of Philosophy in Living Language.
- Support Materials for using Sound-to-Symbol and Singing English in the development of orality
- The Song Game Development Project - a United Way funded Community Innovation designed to pilot the idea of co-lingual song games.
d. Earth Literacies Programs offered in Victoria, B.C.
Research
Dr. Fleurette Sweeney
Dr Sweeney is the Executive Director of the Living Language Institute. She has over 50 years of teaching experience and has been developing the Sound-to-Symbol methodology over the past 30 years.
Dr. Kathleen Forsythe has developed the methodology of Observing for Learning grounded in the statement by Dr.Humberto Maturana: "Everything seen is seen by an observer." (Humberto Maturana- Everything is seen by an Observer, in Gaia: A Way of Knowing, William Irwin Thompson(ed.) Lindisfarne Press, New York 1987)
Observing for learning opens the possibility to see the other
as legitimate...as the learner is...and not as we think he or she should be. Only then can we generate a space of love, the only emotion that expands intelligence. Observing for learning is observing for conduct that is adequate to indicate learning.
Dr. Fleurette Sweeney, SC, President of the Living Language Institute, worked closely with Mary Helen Richards of the Richards Institute for Music Education and Research from the 1960’s until the 1990’s. In the 1970’s and 1980’s she taught courses entitled Education Through Music (ETM) throughout the Lower Mainland, and in the years immediately preceding her retirement from teaching in 1995, she taught courses at UBC, entitled Whole Child/Whole Music. Social play within the context of folk song-games was an essential component in all of these courses. Concurrently with her teaching in North America, Fleurette worked closely with dozens of Japanese teachers teaching English in Japan since 1980. These teachers, all of whom were non-native speakers of English, found that playing folk song-games was a particularly effective context for establishing a strong oral basis for English among their students. In 2002, Dr. Sweeney completed her doctoral thesis at the University Of British Columbia based on Sound to Symbol.
Research Reports available:
Sweeney, F (2002) From Sound to Symbol: The Whole Song as Curriculum, the Whole Child as Pedagogue, Observation as Methodology, Unpublished Doctoral Research, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada,
Sweeney, F and Tubianosa, T- (2004) Final Report of the Singing English Pilot Project, submitted to the Vancouver Foundation, Vancouver, Living Language Institute Foundation
Tubianosa, T. et al – (2005) Final Report of the Singing English Pilot Study, (2005) unpublished Research Report, Vancouver, Living Language Institute Foundation
Contact: LivingLanguage@shaw.ca
In Progress
Forsythe, K, Sweeney, F. et al – ( 2007) Observations of Singing English with Children on the Autistic Spectrum and their Parents, work in progress, Vancouver, Living Language Institute Foundation
Song Game Development Project - with the Marpole Oakridge Family Place, a Community Innovation Project of the United Way operating from January 2008-July 2008.
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